


Fairy in a Jar

by pastasenpai



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Also fluff, Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, yurio as viktuuri's basically adopted son
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-06 21:38:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8770279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pastasenpai/pseuds/pastasenpai
Summary: In which a single night breaks Yurio in more ways than he could have imagined, and Viktor and Yuuri spend a lifetime putting him back together.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> implied non-con (extremely vague, but the hints are still there)  
> (from my tumblr swagmadhi)  
> because i need some viktuuri + yurio family fics and also i need viktuuri taking care of yurio

He sees his reflection in the cold glass of the hospital doors as his aching feet carry his aching body through the entrance, and at first, he cannot recognize it as his own face, his perception muddled by the sting of tears (Yurio never cried) seeping into the open cuts on his skin (Yurio never got hurt).

It was the face of a stranger--a decidedly _not-Yurio_ stranger.

It’s late enough at night for him to be the only patient in the building, a small mercy he is grateful for as he absently drags himself to the front desk, where the nice lady is chatting enthusiastically on the phone, unaware of his presence. The part inside of him that is always demanding attention roars up inside of him, but when Yurio opens his mouth, the words burn like acid in his throat, and that part of him is silently tucked away beneath a layer thinner than the ice he skates on.

Instead, he hesitantly reaches out with a shaking hand, scraped knuckles and bruised wrists barely covered by his torn sleeve, and softly taps the woman’s shoulder, a feeble, too polite gesture he would have never seen himself doing in a million years.

Her face twists with annoyance for the briefest of seconds as she tells the person on the other side of the phone meaningless things _(wait for one second, it’s probably one of those late night drunkards again, I hate this job)_ before she fully turns to look at him for the first time and her face freezes in an expression of horror that would normally seem funny to Yurio, had he not been the cause of it.

There is flurry of motion, then, as time accelerates around his frozen world and there are hands half-leading, half-dragging him into a white-walled room plastered with happy, colorful posters and sharp, pointed tools.

“What’s your name? How old are you?” the doctor asks, peering into his eyes with an annoyingly bright light, and Yurio thinks that these are useless questions--couldn’t they tell who he was already?

He refuses to acknowledge the voice of reason within him that tells him that he just doesn’t want to have to speak, and Yurio only shakes his head, shrinking further into himself as he shoves his hands into the pockets of his hoodie.

The doctor frowns, writing something down onto his clipboard that Yurio knows will come back to bite him in the ass later. “Well, I...suppose asking what happened is out of the question, too…Do you at least have someone we can call? Your parents?”

Yurio closes his eyes, the painfully tight feeling in his throat worsening at the doctor’s probably well-meaning question, and he doesn’t know how to put into words how pitifully _alone_ he is. He couldn’t call his grandfather--the old man had had a lifetime of dealing with the burden that was Yurio, and it would be plain unfair to dump even more problems on him, especially when he had his own bad back to worry about. He briefly considered Yakov, but tossed the idea away almost as soon as it came--he might die of shame if his coach saw him in this state. And of course, he would rather actually die before he would call his real parents.

“Here, it seems like you don’t like to talk, so you can just write it out.” The doctor hands him the pen and a piece of paper, and Yurio stares down at it, chewing on his already bloody lip, honestly considering just throwing the materials at the doctor and making a run for it when an extremely involuntary, unwelcome image of a fat, incompetent, Japanese, glasses-wearing, Katsudon-eating pig and Viktor pops into his mind. It’s a stupid idea, Yurio knows, one that probably wouldn’t make it past the first phone call and end in painful rejection.

Still, when the doctor frowns at the number he’d scrawled onto the paper and asks him if he knows that no such area code exists in Russia, that you’d only find this kind of number in Japan, Yurio just nods.

* * *

 He regrets his decision approximately twelve hours later when he wakes up the sound of Viktor’s annoying voice calling his name and crushing him in a hug that Yurio feels could shatter him like glass. Then the other man pulls back and stares at him, blue eyes unusually serious as he looks over Yurio, who does his best to look normal, willing Viktor to ignore the obvious injuries on his face and neck and the ones hidden beneath the torn clothing that he’d refused to let the doctors remove during their examination.

“Yurio..,” Viktor starts softly, and he wonders why the other just had to stop being an oblivious airhead when it was least convenient for Yurio.

Yurio decides to distract him, pointing over Viktor’s shoulder where Yuuri is struggling with his limited Russian vocabulary to speak to the doctor, who is struggling with his nonexistent Japanese vocabulary to communicate with Yuuri.

“Ah, yes...I should go help him. But we’re talking about this later!”

Yurio watches as Viktor slides up to the ailing duo and wraps his arm lovingly around Yuuri’s waist, surprised at the lack of hatred that usually arises in him whenever he sees their disgustingly public displays of affection. Viktor says something to Yuuri in that filthy Japanese language that probably has something to do with dealing with the lump of trash that had interrupted the happy couple’s life because Yuuri is suddenly taking a seat next to him, giving him a look of pity that fills Yurio with the need to scream insults at him, to get up and snap his fat neck, to run away and never show his shameful face to his ex-rival again. But he cannot force the words to come out, and his body refuses to move no matter how hard he tries, and he’s just so _tired_ of being angry when he’s not even sure anymore of _who_ he’s angry at, so he merely lets out a long breath and tries to listen while not-really-listening to whatever garbage the doctor is telling Viktor.

“...he won't talk?” Viktor’s head is tilted, confusion written all over his dumb face and Yurio curls his hands into fists, wishing he had the strength to prove Viktor wrong.

He doesn't.

“Not to me, at least. He wouldn't respond to my questions and I had to have him write down your phone number. There doesn't seem to be actual damage to his vocal chords, so…” The silver-haired Russian frowns, looking back at Yurio, who looks away, pretending that he hadn't been listening.

“I see...what--what else?”

The doctor shakes his head, looking sympathetic. “There's really not much else we know. We couldn't really get a good look at him.”

That had been mostly his own fault, he knows. He'd probably scared every nurse in the building away when he had tried to bite off the hand of the doctor who had suggested he might have more injuries underneath his clothes. The man had been right, of course, but Yurio didn't need anyone but himself knowing that.

It is then that Yuuri decides to become the boneheaded pig he was destined to be, as he turns towards Yurio with eyes of gentle warmth and carefully pats him on the head. “Don’t be so upset, Yurio. We’ll take you home soon enough.”

_Home? As in, their house?_

Yurio realizes that he had woefully miscalculated the results of his plan, as he had essentially expected them to either reject the claim of being his “parents” outright or would come to pick him up to get him out of the hospital and part ways with him immediately afterwards. But now, it seemed, he would be stuck with them. Perhaps he needed to stay in this hospital for a while longer, if only to allow them to find some cure for idiocy.

“Yurio?” Yuuri’s voice drags him away from his mildly panicked thoughts and the sound of it gives him the strength to retreat behind his barrier of hostility once more as he shoots a sadly ineffectual glare at Yuuri’s still smiling face. Perhaps this was his rival’s sinister plan after all, to bring Yurio into their little love-nest and mock him with close up demonstrations of their disgusting saliva exchanges.

Before he can tell--or rather, show--Yuuri what he thinks of this sudden turn of events, Viktor is upon them, having signed the discharge papers and finished speaking to the doctor.

“Let’s go, then!” he enthuses, grabbing Yurio’s arm with one hand and Yuuri’s hand with the other and hauling both of them out the door. Yurio screams internally, futilely trying to escape Viktor’s grasp, but the Russian man has been trained from years of Makkachin-walking to have a strong hand and does not relent, happily clinging to him like a monstrous, but overly-friendly octopus.

 _We’ll talk about this later_ , Viktor had promised, and while Yurio knows that that is something he has to avoid at all costs, he cannot summon the energy nor the willpower to fight the inevitable and allows himself to be docilely led to the flight to Japan like a sheep being led to slaughter.

He just wouldn’t talk at all, then.

* * *

 He has to concede that Yuuri is not as horrible of a being as he continues to avow to himself in his mind sometime after their first successful dinner together in which Viktor devoured no less than four bowls of katsudon and Yurio managed to sit somewhat peaceably at the table for the entire duration. Admittedly, Yuuri could make tasty katsudon, and even if his questions about Yurio not eating much of it were annoying, they saved Yurio from answering even more annoying questions from Viktor about what had happened to him in the first place. He honestly isn't sure why they haven't just gone and kicked him out yet after three days of this ridiculousness and it's beginning to drive him crazy, trying to find out.

“Yurio, you can sleep in the guest room next to ours, you know.” Yurio shakes his head vehemently at Yuuri’s offer, burrowing himself further into the couch. He really didn't need to be kept up all night by whatever nefarious activities Yuuri and Viktor engaged in inside their bedroom.

Yuuri sighs, running a hand through his messy black hair, and Yurio can see how tired he looks, probably from having to play nursemaid to him for the last 72 hours. He's surprised when the other comes closer but stops nearly a foot away, as if he's afraid to get closer to Yurio. He couldn't blame Yuuri. “I know...you really hate me. But the Grand Prix is over, and I'm no longer your, um…’rival,’ so...why do you still hate me?”

The look on Yuuri’s face is genuinely, honestly hurt, and Yurio can’t understand why his opinion would matter so much to Yuuri, who had already earned Viktor’s attention all the way in fucking Japan when Yurio couldn’t do it right in front of his face in Russia, who had such a large family that loved him so purely and unconditionally, who could fall back on his family’s funds anytime he wanted, even if he didn’t want to. It wasn’t as if he actually _hated_ Yuuri anymore. He was still bitter about the many things he’d come to associate with the other, but even Yurio, in his anger-muddled mind had to acknowledge that the fact that the number he’d given to the doctor had been Yuuri’s said enough.

Yurio only picks at the frayed threads at the end of his too large sleeves, shrugging in what he hopes is an apathetic gesture. He’d already widened the divide between them too far with his past actions, and even if he wanted to (which he most definitely did not) repair it, there was no way Yuuri would accept his apology and allow Yurio to maintain the last shreds of dignity he has left at the same time.

Yuuri stares at him for a long moment, and Yurio shrinks further into himself, willing the stupid man to just give up and go to bed and do whatever nasty things he wanted to do with Viktor already.

“Yurio, if you want to talk to anyone...about all this..,” Yuuri fiddles with his glasses, scrubbing at the lenses almost sheepishly before returning them delicately to his face. “I could...could listen?” He’d forgotten how bold Yuuri had gotten ever since his first saliva exchange with Viktor, and his nails scratch tiny crescent moon marks into his palms as the floodgates open, as the anger rushes up, as he opens his mouth, ready to reject Yuuri to the lowest circle of Hell.

But it won’t come out.

Yuuri’s forehead creases in concern, and Yurio needs to tell him how fat his face looks when he does that, how foolish his brown eyes are right now--there’s a million things that need to be said, and Yurio can’t say any of them.

 _What was_ wrong _with him?_

Yes, his self-imposed vow of silence on the point of his incident was still very much a thing, but it did not apply to daily, healthy, normal activities such as shouting down a pig with every expletive in the book and then some.

Yuuri is coming closer to him now, taking a seat right next to him, and Yurio feels every bone in his body tense at how wrong this entire situation is, with him, the supposedly indomitable Ice Tiger of Russia unable to even muster up even a pitiful meow.

He stands up abruptly as he sees Yuuri’s hand move out of the corner of his eye, attributing his reaction to the fact that Katsuki Yuuri was a fatso pig unworthy of laying a hand on him, and not because Katsuki Yuuri was a older, stronger man alone in a room with him.

“A-ah, sorry, did I...uh, scare--” Yurio leaves before he can finish his ridiculous, impossible sentence and slams the front door hard enough to drown out Yuuri’s worried calls of his name and to properly convey his message of “I’m pissed off, so shut up.”

The night air in Japan is surprisingly warm against his skin, and the soft glow of the streetlights light up the ground in fluorescent blue and white, but there is a most unnerving, annoying prickling feeling underneath Yurio’s skin that he can’t get rid of--one that was definitely not there some three days ago. He thinks about going back inside, the tiny, rational part of him practically screeching in agreement as it attempts to haul him back to a place where he knows is warm and certainly safe. But he’s always clung to his pride with a sort of stubborn perseverance that has carried him through the harsher times of life, and now is no different as he takes a sort of odd comfort in it like a blanket. Yurio stops his hand from reaching the door knob, pushing it into his pocket before it can betray him further, ignoring the tremble in his fingers as he forces himself away from the house.

He really needs to skate.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the ending is rushed and it sucks sad lyfe but at least its a semi-happy ending

As it turns out, not only is he fucked up in the head and body, but he also can no longer do the one thing he’d ever had going for him in life, a conclusion he arrives at after dismally failing the simplest of jumps and traveling so far on his spins that it looked like some unseen hand was attempting to shove him off of the ice before he could do any more harm to it.

He wants to blame it on his too-loose stolen rental skates that his injured hands didn’t have the ability to tighten, on the foreign Japanese ice, on whatever this phase that he’s going through is, but he knows that in the end, it all comes back to his new, shiny inability to speak.

The empty rink seems unusually cold as Yurio carefully picks himself up off of the ice and does his best to hobble off to safe ground and keep himself from flying apart at the seams like he wishes he would.

Without his skating, he has nothing left.

He returns the shitty rental skates to the shelf where he’d found them and pushes his way out of the Ice Castle that seemed to be a never ending fountain of humiliation and defeat.

Viktor is standing outside, waiting for him, an unreadable look on his face.

“Yura. I figured you would be here.”

The words are light enough, but there’s no smile in Viktor’s voice or on his face and it sets Yurio on edge in a way he knows it shouldn’t. Swallowing down his reservations, he scowls at Viktor (who had probably been watching him fail the entire time, the asshole) and attempts to walk past him.

“We were honestly worried about you--where are you going now?”

Viktor--stupid, emotionally inept Viktor--grabs the back of his jacket and tugs him back, a half-playful gesture that Mila and Yakov have done to him plenty of times before with more or less no harm done to either party.

But this time it makes its merry way into one of the cracks left behind from when Yurio had so desperately tried to piece himself back together and lodges itself there quite comfortably, and suddenly Viktor doesn't look like Viktor--he looks like the taste of blood and something else in Yurio’s mouth, like the shadows thrown against the walls of a dark alley, like rough hands on his body and skin underneath his fingernails.

“Yura, I know I'm handsome, but your staring is getting a little--”

He sees Viktor’s hand, reaching out to grab his shoulder and Yurio violently shoves him away, the noise of Viktor’s collision with the ground oddly distant as the world spins around him and the Viktor in his twisted imagination and the Viktor in front of him blur together. They stare at each other in the silence of the night for a long minute, and he watches as the look in Viktor’s eyes hardens slowly, like sand into glass.

Had he finally, _finally_ managed to piss off Viktor, to wipe that insufferable, oblivious smile off of his face for once?

(Yurio ignores the part of him that warns him of impending danger, the part that claims that an angry anyone that he can’t outrun is a bad, bad thing, the part of him that froze like ice on that night an eternity ago and turned his “ _no’s_ ” and his “ _stop’s_ ” into nothing.)

But Viktor only sighs, running a hand over his tired face and patting the ground next to him, motioning for Yurio to come sit next to him.

He takes the offer with some hesitation, carefully placing himself some distance away from Viktor--close enough to get a good look at his face when he says whatever he wants to say and far enough to make a quick getaway when the annoying questions begin.

“You know, you remind me of Makkachin sometimes, Yurio. He used to run away a lot too, and we’d always get freaked out over him, but eventually he’d come back and go back to his old, food-stealing, fluffy self.”

Great.

Now he was being compared to a dog, of all things.

At Yurio’s glare, Viktor hastens to correct himself, his expression turning sheepish as he realizes just how out of his element he is in this situation, and Yurio almost finds himself wishing that Yuuri was here instead. At least the katsudon knew when to shut up.

“Yurio...we have to know what happened in order to help you.”

Yurio shuts his eyes, his fingers digging into the grass underneath them. They didn’t need to know; in fact, they were the last people he’d ever tell. Viktor was so full of bullshit as always--they didn’t want to help him, they probably just wanted to satisfy their own sick curiosity.

Viktor takes advantage of his silence to continue talking, seemingly oblivious to Yurio’s inner turmoil.

“The doctor told me how you wouldn’t let them check under your clothes, Yura. And when we took you home, you wouldn’t let us see either--you wouldn’t come out of your room until we brought you new clothes. You won’t talk, you won’t eat, you’ve taken nine showers in the three days you’ve been here…”

Viktor swallows hard, his light blue eyes darkened to a shade that Yurio doesn’t recognize.

“I don’t--I really want to be wrong, but, everything is making me think…”

Yurio finds himself rapidly losing control of the situation, of himself, as Viktor draws ever closer to uncovering the mystery that Yurio had worked so hard to pack away and shove into a deep, dark corner of his mind. The air around him turns too thick, too humid, and he feels like he’s trying to breathe while submerged in a pool of suffocating syrup.

He pushes weakly at Viktor’s arm, willing him to shut up, but of course, Viktor won’t, because that never works and no one stops doing something to you that you don’t like just because you want them to or tell them to.

(But he’d never said it out loud, anyway.)

“Hey, Yura?”

Viktor’s voice is oddly muffled to his ears, like he’s hearing it underneath all the water he’s drowning in, and the image of Viktor’s concerned face in front of him blurs at the edges as it melts into the air.

Viktor grabs his shoulders, shaking him slightly, but he barely feels it, the sensation lost in the rising tide that blots out his vision to an inky black and steals the air from his lungs and plucks the non-existent words from his mouth.

Yurio lets it wash him away into nothing.

* * *

 

He wakes up to soft blankets pulled over him and even softer voices arguing by his bedside. For a moment, he considers interrupting whatever passionate declarations of love that must be leaving Viktor’s mouth, but he’s far too comfortable to be able to force himself to move.

“I told you that you should have gone….I'm really not good at talking to people,” he hears Viktor mutter quietly to Yuuri, who makes a noise of pure exasperation in return.

“Well, Yurio is different. He hates me--if I tried going after him, he'd have run away. And at least you brought him home…”

“After making him freaked out enough to faint, yes…”

So they were talking about him, then. He waits patiently for the moment where they’d bring up the elephant in the room--the problem of _him_ and his utter lack of speech, but the only thing that comes is a gentle hand lightly stroking his hair, and a quiet chuckle from Viktor.

“He looks like a little kitten when he sleeps…”

Yurio finds the pleasant warmth that arises within him at the comment extremely alarming and thinks that perhaps dropping the pretend-sleep act would in fact be the best option, if only to stop their inane blatherings about kittens and how he most definitely did not resemble one.

He blinks the spots out of his eyes as he tilts his head upwards to glare at Viktor, who is still smiling in that annoying way, and at Yuuri, whose hand has mysteriously disappeared from Yurio’s head.

“O-oh, you're awake?” Yuuri questions, and Yurio notices the suspiciously shiny gleam to Yuuri’s eyes.

He wonders when he’d begun to feel guilty for making Yuuri cry.

“I was, we were so worried, I thought you weren't coming back or that you’d get lost, or something would happen…”

Yuuri’s fears aren't exactly unfounded, which is the worst part of all of this--that that _something_ had already happened because Yurio had been too stupid and too stubborn to stay on the side of caution, because he'd thought he, Yuri Plisetsky, was invincible and untouchable.

The vines tangled around his throat, loosen ever so slightly at the twin looks of pure concern on both of these stupid, caring faces.

“S-sorry..,” he chokes out, both the apology and the act of speaking oddly foreign in his throat, and that single word is all his body will allow him to say, for the miraculous ability to talk leaves as soon as it had come.

“Y-Yurio…”

Yuuri makes an incomprehensible noise of distress before lurching forward and wrapping his arms around Yurio’s waist, who immediately attempts to extricate himself from the hug. Viktor watches the both of them with a fond smile, before opening his arms as well, and Yurio, unfortunately, cannot scream loudly enough to scare him away.

If he’d known it would be such a big deal to hear him say “sorry,” he never would have said it. But he can't deny that in that moment, squished between Viktor and Yuuri’s arms, he's never felt more safe in his life.

* * *

 He finds it strange that they don’t push him to talk more after hearing his one word apology that night, but he’s definitely grateful for it, even if they continue to dance about the subject of what happened to him like they’re trapped in a cage with a particularly violent wild animal.

In a vague attempt to convey his gratefulness, Yurio does his best to treat the both of them with a little less hostility than before, only glaring at them when one of their comments truly warranted it, and even tolerating their intense cuddling sessions at night by the TV, although he made sure to put the entire length of couch between him and their grossness. Still, he’d be the first to admit that none of his actions could particularly constitute as _nice_ , which is what makes their affection towards him all the more infuriating.

It had been over a week since he’d first come to their home, and he’d spent every night wondering if the next day would be the one where they’d finally tire of him (as people generally tended to do) and tell him to leave (which was a new sensation for him, as he was usually the one being left behind).

He hates to admit to himself that he’d allowed himself to get so attached to Viktor and Yuuri that when he was inevitably removed from their lives, it would actually hurt him more than he cared to think about, and it is this sentiment that has him leaning pathetically over the toilet at four in the morning, the dregs of a recurring nightmare clinging to him like parasites.

Yurio wants, no, he _needs_ to take a shower, to erase the memory of dirty hands and dirty _him_ but he knows that the sound of the running water will wake his two hosts up and the last thing he needs is for them to come running in and take one look at him and pepper him with questions about what’s wrong.

So instead, he rests his head against the cool tile walls of the bathroom and occasionally wipes at his eyes, hating himself because no matter how hard he tries, he just can’t force himself to forget that night, hating himself because he’s so ridiculously pathetic and weak, crying over something that happened almost a month ago.

He bites his lip hard enough to draw blood, the taste of copper flooding his mouth and only pushing him further back into the clutches of his waking nightmare and he wraps his arms around himself, curling up in a futile attempt to protect himself from an enemy that’s not even there.

_Ridiculous_.

Yurio isn’t sure how long he stays like that, a feeble ball of cowardice tucked into the corner the bathroom, but eventually,  he hears the handle of the door click against the lock.

“O-oh...Yurio? You’re already in here?”

Yurio does his best to muffle his sniffles at the sound of Yuuri’s concerned voice, wiping frantically at the blood from his mouth and the tears on his face with the already dirtied sleeve of his hoodie, wondering if he can somehow fool Yuuri into thinking everything was fine.

“Sorry, Yurio, I really have to take a shower...can you let me in?”

He steels his resolve as much as he can, slowly standing up and avoiding his own gaze in the mirror as he reaches for the door, opening it a little too quickly and startling Yuuri, who’d been leaning against it. Yurio barely has the time to curse the ugly twist of fate that is working against him when Yuuri loses his balance and falls right into him--right on _top_ of him and anything resembling thought is replaced with sheer panic.

Despite the still-rational part of him that screams at him _do not_ , he finds himself struggling desperately underneath Yuuri’s apologizing form, his nails drawing blood as he claws at whatever exposed inch of skin he can reach, and Yuuri is shouting something and there are footsteps in the distance, but his own voice is so painfully silent as always.

“Yura, stop!”

Viktor’s firm hands are on him now, pulling him away from Yuuri and wrapping around his wrists.

“Viktor, don’t hold him like that--!” Yuuri’s voice is thick with emotion and Yurio knows with a certainty that they’re because of him.

“I don’t want him to hurt himself!”

Viktor didn’t want him to hurt _Yuuri_ , Yurio knows, and something about this revelation twists his fear and anger into inexplicable grief.

As his mind slowly clears and the world comes back into focus, he loses whatever little energy he’d had, going limp in Viktor’s arms and staring dazedly at the fresh wound on Yuuri’s face, slowly dripping blood from where Yurio had scratched him.

Yuuri’s eyes are wide, the tears already gathering at his dark lashes, and he waits for Viktor to dump him onto the floor to go attend to his precious boyfriend. He'd been stupid to think this fragile illusion of a family life he’d never had could last, to think that he wouldn't end up ruining it.

“Did--did I hurt you, Yurio?”

Yuuri reaches out to touch his face, his fingers coming away oddly wet, and it is then Yurio realizes that he is crying--actually crying--in front of the two people he had sworn never to show his weakness to, in front of the person he’d hurt with his own hands and his long gone words.

Katsuki Yuuri’s heart really was too soft, if he could sit there with a still-bleeding wound on his face and worry about the one who put it there.

He jerks his face away, burying it into Viktor’s chest, his fingers tangling into the fabric of the other’s shirt as the foreign wave of emotion crashes into him and fills in the cracks in his badly self-repaired mind and heart.

“Yura, don't cry...it's just a scratch and I don't think you meant to hurt him. You're not like that, I know.”

He is _not_ crying, and neither Viktor nor Yuuri know what he's really like--that for all his bravado and anger and self-proclaimed independence, he had only lain there and taken it when the time to prove himself had actually come. But he doesn't want Viktor to let him go just yet, so he only nods faintly, missing the looks of concern Yuuri and Viktor are probably exchanging above his head.

He hears the quiet rustle of fabric as Yuuri carefully moves to sit next to Viktor and gently rubs Yurio’s back in a comforting gesture and Yurio still cannot understand why they persist in being so _nice_ to him.

Had they forgotten how Yurio had literally hunted Yuuri down to beat him down when he was at his lowest point? Or when he had literally kicked Yuuri through the glass door of Ice Castle? Or when he’d interrupted Viktor’s happiness in a selfish attempt to drag him back to Russia simply because he couldn't stand to have yet another person leave him behind?

“I want--”

_Children should be seen and not heard, boy._

The sound escapes him without his permission, and he bites his lip with a bit more force than necessary, the sudden visage of his stern-faced, tight-lipped father silencing him better than he could himself, because his father is right, as always and no one wants to hear him complain.

“You want what, Yura?”

Viktor’s voice is a sweet, sweet poison, luring him into a trap that he can't and doesn't want to walk out of and at the sound of it, cold green eyes and graying blond hair turn to warm brown and black and blue and silver and the deluded sense of longing, of desire for something that was never his to begin with that he feels in that moment is enough to finally break him all over again.

Viktor shifts in place, gently adjusting him in his arms until Yurio can’t hide in them anymore and awkwardly handing him a wad of toilet paper and Yurio stares at it uncertainly for a long moment.

“I want...you to help me.”

His last words tumble out in a rush and he feels his face flush with embarrassment as he stares at the tile floor, dreading their reactions.

Yurio flinches when Yuuri lets out a muffled noise of happiness and pulls him into a hug.

“We’ve been waiting for you to let us in, Yura,” Viktor says quietly, and to his surprise, Viktor sounds like he might cry as well, and Yurio is far too tired to process all of this _emotion_.

“I'll try--to tell you what happened,” he interrupts their various displays of affection upon him, and he feels Yuuri stiffen against him at Yurio’s quiet declaration.

“You shouldn't rush it, Yurio. Not if you're not ready--”

“You've been wanting to know this whole time!” Yurio snaps half-heartedly at Viktor, knowing that if he doesn't say it now, he probably won't ever get the courage to do it again. “Just...don't get mad at me.”

He shoves his hands into his pockets to hide the tremor in them and lets out a long breath, keeping his eyes determinedly on a spot on the floor, but when he speaks, his voice never wavers, even as the look on Viktor's face hardens into one of barely concealed fury (not at him, he has to remind himself) and Yuuri cannot find it in himself to properly express his horror and Yurio finds himself crying for what must be the third time that night.

The burn of his tears is still a strange feeling to him, lost in memories of cold winters and turned backs and painful rejection.

He likes to think that they mean that he’s healing.

* * *

_"What the hell did you just say?!”_

His voice, cracked with disuse and softer than it should be, but still his own, truly returns to him on a fairly ordinary, peaceful afternoon when he smashes his foot into the back of the crazy bastard who had decided it was a good idea to talk shit about Yuuri in _his_ presence.

Admittedly, maybe he had, in the past, given off the impression that he would happily agree with anyone who insulted the katsudon, but the old bitterness inside of him over Viktor’s choice had left him long ago, and he’d seen how hard Yuuri worked and how much Yuuri cared and so, this asshole had absolutely no right to insult Yuuri in this way, just because he was jealous of Yuuri and Viktor’s gross relationship or whatever.

He’d always known that Viktor had his fair share of deluded fans, but he didn’t think it was quite this bad. It was really annoying, actually, how someone like _Viktor_ managed to earn himself devotion of this level, so of course, it wasn’t _really_ like he was defending Yuuri, who somehow still had the self-esteem of a soggy pork cutlet bowl.

They’ve attracted quite a bit of a crowd at this point, but Yurio can’t bring himself to really care as he steps on the guy’s head, adrenaline and his old, normally threatening demeanor rushing to his head. Yuuri’s stupid cow eyes are wide behind his nerdy glasses, and Yurio isn’t entirely sure whether it’s from the shock of seeing Yurio’s aggression reappear for the first time in months, or from the man’s unjustified comments.

“You listen here, you piece of shit,” Yurio continues, because the man’s attention is inexplicably _not_ on the 16-year old boy who’d just kicked his ass into next week. “ _I_ have to put up with their hugging and their making out and their drooling all over each other and everything annoying about them, so _I_ get the right to insult them. You don’t.”

The man underneath him mumbles what Yurio thinks is a feeble apology, and Yurio helpfully removes his foot from the man’s face, ignoring the complete silence of the onlookers around them. A single, emboldened paparazzi lifts his camera in hopes of getting a picture, but is quickly dissuaded by the look Yurio throws in his direction.

“And what are all of you standing around here for?!” Yurio snaps, a flush of slight embarrassment creeping up the back of his neck as he realizes exactly what he’s done in the middle of a crowd of onlookers. “Yeah, I don’t hate Katsuki Yuuri, now fuck off!”

He tugs his hood down and backs away with a scoff as the herd of cattle slowly begins to disperse, more than prepared to make a quick exit when he is suddenly crushed by an unstoppable force.

“I’m glad you’re really talking again, Yurio!” Viktor practically wails with happiness as he crushes Yurio with a hug, which is disgusting because they’re in public and this grown-ass man is nearly in tears over him.

“Shut up,” he snaps, only half-heartedly attempting to push Viktor away. He looks to Yuuri for some semblance of sanity, but, to his great horror, the pig is even worse, smiling at the both of them in a ridiculously sappy way that Yurio was thought he would only have to bear witness to in Mila’s stupid romance picture books.

“Wh-what’s wrong with the both of you?!” he sputters, scaring off the last of the stray paparazzi with a sour glare. “It’s not that big of a deal that I’m talking! That guy just really needed some sense knocked into him!”

But from the warm, foreign tingle in his stomach that just won’t go away, he knows that it is, and when, the next morning, the first thing that he sees on his Instagram account as he eats his cereal and watches Yuuri scold Viktor for feeding Makkachin too many pieces of sausage, is a photo of him, Yuuri, and Viktor and the caption "#family" underneath, he merely tucks his phone into the pocket of his hoodie and smiles to himself.


End file.
